Wednesday, 26 September 2012

A Woman's Place Is In The Past.

Ah, the season of mists, mellow fruitfulness and TV programmes
with lots of nice hats. The autumn TV schedules in the UK are awash with period
dramas again. Hearts are fluttering upstairs and downstairs at Downton Abbey;
innocent girls are in danger of ruination at The Paradise and war is
picturesque hell at Parade’s End.

Now, I like a crinoline skirt and bit of RADA received
pronunciation acting as much as the next person. However, it does seem that television
is living in the past a little too often at the moment. It’s hardly surprising
with the ratings success of Downton and Call The Midwife. It seems that the audience
love a little bit of vintage. The problem I have with all this history is that
it doesn’t leave much room for her-story.

The lack of strong female characters on TV and in the movies
is well-trodden ground. Barely a week seems to go by without one of our great
actresses complaining that there are very limited roles for women and
especially older women. And I agree with them. Furthermore, I have to question whether television that harks
back to a time when women were disenfranchised, silenced and given limited life
options is actually going to help the cause.

Of course, there are parts for women in period dramas. After
all, someone has to wear the nice frocks and heave their bosoms – but sometimes
it feels like that’s all they do. Period dramas often rely heavily on their own set of female
stereotypes. The wide-eyed innocent girl in danger of being ruined by the
rapacious employer. The bitter spinster always ready with sharp rebuke seemingly
just because her hymen is still intact. The
dowager insisting that things are done properly and making sure that everyone
knows their place as the sun sets on the British Empire. And of course, the plain and simple serving girl popping up to drop a blancmange whenever we need a little light relief. And those characters
are great fun and probably wonderful to write.

However, it seems that the drama for those women revolves
around the same old issues and crises. In their fictional world, the worst
thing that can happen to them is that they have sex outside wedlock, marry a
poor man or drop a blancmange. Those things are simply not high stakes in the
modern world (or at least one would hope not). So, the constant harking back to
those simpler times is surely having one of two effects.

Either, we are condemning female characters to a life of inconsequential
stories that we don’t really care about. We never see them in the trenches or
in a cabinet meeting with Lloyd George or doing the important stuff. They are
too damn busy dropping blancmanges on their heaving bosoms.

Or, if we do accept that to lose one’s virginity when one
doesn’t have a ring on one’s finger is simply the very end; are we reinforcing ideas
about women that should have gone out with the Charleston? If we see
female characters in constant servitude and represented as powerless, that can’t
be a good thing. Can it?

Also, side note, there seems to be a great love amongst the
writers of period drama for killing women in a romantic fashion. There’s the
old trope of blood in the handkerchief meaning imminent death by consumption or
Spanish Flu. Or the troublesome birth that leads to our hero clutching his
sweaty wife’s hand as she uses her last breath to ask whether the baby is okay.
Those women are always so very, very brave and have the stiffest of upper lips.
Not one of them begs for their life or rages against the dying of the light. It’s
almost as if their deaths don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things,
isn’t it?

Even in shows where historical accuracy is not exactly paramount
women are being sidelined. There is a new series of Merlin about to start in
BBC1 and I can only pray that the women in that show get to do something other
than be evil super bitches or anxious serving girls. But as Gwen/Guinevere
barely features in the trailer, I’m not going to put money on it. Come on
lads, you’ve taken enough liberties with the Arthurian legend, why not a bit of
equal opportunities around the Round Table? I’ll even write it for you. I’m
just saying, it would be nice to see a kick-ass female role model (other than
Amy Pond and River Song) on a Saturday tea time. Whither Buffy?

Sure, it's all about context and it’s interesting to see how
far sexual politics have come but I worry that we are consigning our great
actresses to the kitchen and the corset. For example, it is the great Maggie
Smith that makes the faintly ludicrous Downton Abbey unmissable. She turns a high-handed,
catty remark into utter poetry. But that’s all she bloody does! Imagine if a
writer had the imagination to write a part where she has real power? Maggie
Smith as a Cabinet Minister, a retired spy, a diplomat, a serial killer? I’d
watch that!

However, and I’m going to be tad harsh here for a moment, I
think in that ideal world of women doing actually dramatic things there wouldn’t
be many parts for some of the other actresses. The wide-eyed virgins who are
called on to do nothing but simper and blush? They’d be on the dole (or in Hollyoaks).
Because those performances and roles are archaic and dull. It’s time to consign
them to the past.

But, in the interests of fairness, I must give an honourable
mention to two period dramas for letting the sisters do it for themselves.
Firstly. The Hour had some truly brilliant female characters working in a man’s
world. And Parade’s End did something utterly brilliant by exploring the
constraints on women in the early 20th century. Those characters
were not happy with their lots in life, they didn’t accept the orthodoxy of
their gender and it drove the drama beautifully. And they still wore nice frocks.
Food for thought, but not blancmange.

5 comments:

It may be tempting for people to say that as women were disempowered in 'olden times' then it's a true reflection of the times that their characters are depicted as having nothing significant to offer. Nice try. To them I say "House of Elliot". I win.

House of Elliot! That was a good show. Nice frocks and cracking politics. Does make me wonder where the three-part Sunday afternoon series about Emmeline Pankhurst or Marie Stopes is? Same period-ish, brilliant women.

There is an argument to say that "We're all more intelligent than that, we know it's drama and see it as that" but I have never thought that 'we' are a particularly intelligent bunch. 'We' are the kind of people that shout obscenties at Dirty Den in the street cos we think he's real. So a few stronger women here and there might not go amiss... On a similar note, if something written in the past - such as Carousel - has an outdated message in it that is harmful to women, should we still perform it? Are 'we' intelligent enough to handle that?

I think that's an interesting point. I would be awful to think that something as brilliantly written and scored as Carousel would never get performed again. The same is true of the religious/politics in The Merchant of Venice. I think good writing is good writing. But teh best writing is the stuff that shocks, shakes and surprises us. I think period drama has become moribund with archetypes and cliches, none of which are particularly necessary or helpful. And there is no excuse for it! It's fiction, we can do what we want with new scripts and imaginative characters - except we're not.

About Me

TV Writer and all-round Leeds-based gobshite. I've written episodes of Fat Friends, Emmerdale, New Tricks, Robin Hood and Waterloo Road. Wrote one experimental radio play, Bitter Pill, but I didn't inhale. Now developing various projects (that's how you say it, isn't it?).